The Fourth Outstanding Person of Huangpu Military Academy

"The War College recruited its members from lieutenants and young officers in the German Army. Officers applied voluntarily, but applicants had to go through rigorous examinations and interviews. Criteria included being sufficiently intelligent, having sufficient scientific knowledge, or possessing special talents. Only one in five applicants passed the examinations, and fewer than half of the admitted students graduated."

"Officers who graduated and joined the General Staff introduced the War College's latest military doctrines to the General Staff. The War College's reputation reached its peak after the Franco-Prussian War, which earned it the nickname 'Total War College.'"

Wang Bailing: "So, what is the Soviet equivalent of this war academy?"

Pavlovka paused, speaking incessantly. "It should be, no, it was, the General Staff Military Academy..."

……

Wang Bailing finally understood it completely.

First, this war research group actually didn't learn from Russia, but from Prussia. (Reassurance!)

Second, the Prussian War Academy was a relatively advanced military academy, and the officers trained there had higher ranks than those at the Whampoa Military Academy.

After figuring it out, Wang Bailing put the matter aside for the time being and focused on managing his relationship with Chiang Kai-shek.

It was not about getting promoted as the head of the professorial department, but about competing for the position of the head of the Whampoa Military Academy's teaching corps to be established in the future.

What's the point of teaching on this island? Being sent out as a group leader is where you can show your talents.

Even if I can't get the position of leader of the First Regiment, it should be my turn to be the leader of the Second Regiment.

……

"Run! Run! Run!"

"Team Two, hurry up!"

It was another training day, and more than 400 students from Huangpu Military Academy were running circles along the dirt road around the campus.

Chen Tianheng estimated that this was probably an "armed cross-country run" of less than 4 kilometers, but for the physical fitness of young people of this era, it was still quite difficult for many people to complete a 4-kilometer armed cross-country run in a fast manner.

Although the opening ceremony had been over for a week and two weeks of basic training had actually been completed before the ceremony, seeing Huang Wei panting like a bellows beside me, I knew that this trip was not easy for him.

However, Huang Wei has made obvious progress in the past half month. He has run about 2.5 kilometers so far, and he can still keep up with Chen Tianheng. You should know that when he ran such a big circle for the first time, Huang Wei fell behind after two kilometers.

"Is the gun we carry light or heavy?"

Xu Jishen was also near Chen Tianheng, and asked him breathlessly. Before Chen Tianheng could think of how to answer, Li Zhilong ran over from behind:

"Is there even a question? Of course a wooden spear isn't as heavy as a real one! At least 20% lighter!"

Li Zhilong was also one of the Whampoa cadets who had served in the army. He received formal military education at the Yantai Naval School and then came to Whampoa.

The focus of the discussion among several people was the thing that everyone carried on their backs:

——Wooden spear.

A rifle made of sawn wood.

Even now, the first batch of students are still training with wooden spears. They carry wood during marches, line up wood in formations, and practice spear fighting and bayoneting, all while holding this piece of wood.

There are about a dozen rifles in the entire school now, and the janitors and guards have divided them up.

Li Zhilong: "It is said that when Whampoa Military Academy was being planned, Premier Sun instructed the Shijing Arsenal to provide 500 rifles for the cadets to use in training. However, from the planning stage to the start of the school, and even now, after so long, the Shijing Arsenal still hasn't given us any rifles."

Chen Tianheng: "The Shijing Arsenal is now controlled by the Yunnan Army. Although the Yunnan Army is nominally loyal to Premier Sun, they still have their own little calculations in mind. Zhou Shidi! Captain Zhou! Do you know any inside information?"

Zhou Shidi was the captain of the second squadron. He had previously served in the army as a member of Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard, so after the opening of Whampoa Military Academy, he assumed the position of captain, a position between cadet and instructor. Seeing Chen Tianheng's question, Zhou Shidi said, "There is an inside story. Early this morning, President Chiang went to the Shijing Arsenal to request guns."

Li Zhilong: "Why, Ishii is still refusing to give it to you?"

Zhou Shidi: "They've refused to deliver three or four times. With Ishii's production capacity, 500 rifles should only take half a month, but they've been dragging their feet for half a year and refusing to deliver them. To put it bluntly, they have something against the Whampoa Military Academy and are worried that if the Whampoa clique becomes an army, the status of these warlord troops will decline in the eyes of Premier Sun. So today, the principal may not be asking for guns, but trying to snatch them."

Xu Jishen: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Captain Zhou, are you saying that Principal Jiang went to rob the arsenal? Can he come back?"

After Xu Jishen's interruption, everyone imagined the scene of Chiang Kai-shek being aimed at by dozens of rifles in the arsenal, and they were immediately overjoyed.

"Ahem," Chen Tianheng stopped everyone's uncontrolled thoughts, "It's not that serious. Actually, the general manager of the Shijing Arsenal, although he's from the Yunnan Army, has an old friendship with President Jiang. He came personally, using his old connections and reputation to get Shijing to deliver the guns as soon as possible."

What happened next was exactly as Chen Tianheng had predicted. That afternoon, Chiang Kai-shek returned to the Whampoa Military Academy, followed by seven or eight carts loaded with boxes of guns and ammunition.

The next day, guns were distributed to every class in each student team. Now Ye Jianying no longer had to draw pictures and write on the blackboard when studying "Weapons Science".

……

"I'm here to see what your war research group is discussing right now."

Wednesday night.

As expected, Ye Jianying was invited to attend the seminar.

Chen Tianheng: "Director Ye, the topics we are going to discuss today are all in this sandbox."

The classroom of the War Research Society was brightly lit with candles. In the middle of the classroom was a sand table made with wood provided by Ye Jianying and carpentry work done by members in their spare time.

The sandbox uses wet sand to simulate terrain such as mountains and hills. Sometimes other objects are put in it, such as cardboard boxes and matchboxes to simulate buildings, and soldiers to simulate soldiers or troops.

Today's sandbox, huh? Why is it all made of cardboard?

Box upon box.

Chen Tianheng: "We've created a representation of the urban topography of Guangzhou's Xiguan area. This is the street, this is the alley. The cardboard boxes are arranged to form the buildings along the street."

"These matchsticks are the barricades constructed by Huang Wei and Li Zhilong, who played the blue team, according to their own ideas."

"This, the largest cardboard box, is from the Guangzhou Thirteen Hongs Guild Hall during the Qing Dynasty, which is now the headquarters building of the Guangzhou Merchants Association."

Chapter 34

Simulate the revolutionary army’s response if the “Guangzhou Merchant Corps Rebellion” occurs.

Chen Tianheng felt that the "Blue" Merchant Corps forces, played by Huang Wei and Li Zhilong, were a bit too powerful, especially Huang Wei. During his simulations, he had the Merchant Corps launch several small-scale counterattacks, each of which recaptured buildings within a radius of dozens of meters. In reality, the Merchant Corps forces probably wouldn't have the courage to launch such a tactical counterattack. However, a stronger Blue Army wasn't a bad thing.

However, although the merchant corps had the advantage of terrain, the revolutionary army had an absolute advantage in terms of manpower. In the end, after two attempts, the attacking side, led by Jiang Xianyun and Zheng Dongguo, completed the task in the third attack simulation and defeated the merchant corps.

Chen Tianheng was the referee of the seminar, and Ye Jianying, who was specially invited, was the general director of the seminar. The two met and discussed it, and then revised the rules:

——The attacking party is not allowed to use arson tactics.

Then in the fourth simulation, the attackers attacked again.

The simulation lasted the entire night. At the end, Chen Tianheng even secured an unexpected benefit for the War Research Society:

Deputy Director Ye will choose a day next week and ask the members of the War Research Society to go out for a day to Guangzhou City to carefully inspect the buildings and streets near Xiguan. This time, they will ask in detail how many main doors, side doors, and back doors each building has, whether the houses are made of wood or bricks, how thick the brick walls are, etc.

Although the on-site inspection is definitely mainly for business, it is still possible to take a holiday and go into the city.

……

"Hello, Comrade General Counsel Pavlov!"

Chen Tianheng, Jiang Xianyun, and Chen Geng, the president and vice president of the "War Research Society", walked into the office of Pavel Pavlov, the Soviet chief adviser.

Pavlov was the highest-ranking leader in the Whampoa Military Academy (higher than Chiang Kai-shek), and it was not easy to meet him once. After attending two seminars, Ye Jianying finally agreed to Chen Tianheng's request and mentioned it to Pavlov.

"I've heard of your war research group." Pavlov looked at the three young Chinese men. "You are currently receiving training as junior officers and non-commissioned officers, yet you are beginning to imitate the methods of mid-level and high-level military academies in your own studies."

Chen Tianheng: "The mission of revolutionary soldiers is to serve the country and the nation, dedicating everything to national unity and the well-being of the people. Therefore, as cadets, we must be diligent and studious in our studies at the military academy, thoroughly mastering the art of war. Furthermore, I believe that the future revolutionary army will also need senior officers."

Chen Tianheng's words cannot be refuted.

"So, what do you want me to teach you at the War Research Institute?"

Chen Tianheng: "We would like to learn in detail the tactical details of the 1916 Brusilov Breakthrough. Please, please, or someone in the Soviet advisory group who has relevant experience, teach us."

Pavlov glanced at the three men again and shook his head. "No, there's nothing to say about the Brusilov Breakthrough. It was a battle in a misguided war, with heavy casualties on both sides. If anything, it contributed to a growing skepticism among the Russian army and people about the war effort."

Chen Tianheng: “???”

Pavlov was too lazy to give lectures, especially not to talk about Brusilov’s breakthrough?

……

Brusilov Breakthrough, Russia's greatest military victory in World War I.

After the Battle of Verdun in 1916, Britain and France urgently asked Tsarist Russia to launch an offensive on the Eastern Front to force the Russian army to withdraw troops from the Western Front and relieve the pressure on Verdun. The honest Tsar launched the offensive.

The result of the battle was that the Russian army suffered a huge casualties of 50 people, but Austria-Hungary collapsed directly, losing more than one million people. The German army on the Eastern Front also suffered more than 30 casualties. Germany was forced to transfer troops from the Western Front to the Eastern Front.

Chen Tianheng's focus was not on the outcome of the battle, but on the fact that the Russian commander Brusilov adopted the advice of the general staff and adopted the "group breakthrough" tactics in the attack.

The Russians abandoned the traditional human wave tactics of charging entire battalions and regiments, instead dividing their infantry into large groups of three or four men. After a brief artillery bombardment, they launched infiltration attacks against the weak points of the Austro-Hungarian trenches. The groups carried a considerable amount of explosives and demolition materials during their attacks. After achieving a breakthrough, they blew up barbed wire and various obstacles, facilitating the subsequent infantry's advance through the breach.

After its use in this battle, this new tactic was not taken seriously by the Russian General Staff and the Tsar, but Germany took it very seriously. After careful review, reference, and modification, a similar tactic, called the "Stormtroopers," began to appear on the German front in 1917.

Germany's Storm Troopers tactics attracted the attention of Western countries after the end of World War I, but Britain and France were discouraged after the war, anti-war thoughts were everywhere, public intellectuals were reflecting on the issue, and the military was also reluctant to study any tactics with "offensive" elements. Only Japan attached the most importance to it and learned from it most seriously.

Later, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China. In the first few years, the Eighth Route Army was taught a lesson by the Japanese infantry tactics. In the following years, they gradually learned from them and surpassed them, and began to teach the Japanese how to behave.

In fact, the "transmission" of tactics among countries in the past few times was the same. Each "learning and reference" was an iteration and upgrade of the version.

This is the origin of the PLA's infantry tactics—new infantry tactics that have been iterated and upgraded four times.

Chen Tianheng knew this, but he still hoped that a Whampoa instructor from this era would come out to teach, so that the alumni of the War Research Society could...

It will be easier to accept.

But what he didn't expect was that he would be directly defeated by Pavlov.

……

"Move forward with guns in hand, march in step!"

"One, two, one, one, two, one! Use your peripheral vision to pay attention to the positions of your teammates on your left and right! Don't get ahead, and don't get behind!"

"One, two, one, run, run!!"

"kill--!"

“Shout it out loud!”

"kill--!"

Daily routine exercise classes.

More than 100 students from the second team, holding 1903-type Mauser rifles from the Ishii Arsenal, formed a horizontal line under the command of the instructor. They first marched in step, then ran, and rushed for dozens of meters, stabbing their bayonets into the bellies of the row of scarecrows.

The Whampoa Military Academy's training department, headed by Li Jishen and Deng Yanda as its director and deputy director, actually used Soviet textbooks for cadet training. These, however, lacked any reference to "group breakthroughs" or "storm commandos" and instead relied on the same old tactics, emphasizing the use of large numbers of troops forming skirmish lines and charging upward.

Let the trainees train like this now, and when they graduate, they will be asked to lead a squad, a platoon or a company to charge in formation with bayonets fixed. These troops will be organized into a larger infantry group, with hundreds or thousands of people charging in formation with bayonets fixed.

If the division headquarters in the rear fires a signal flare, more than a thousand of your men can quickly jump out of the trenches and put on their bayonets, and more than a thousand of them do not squeeze or step on each other, do not rush in the wrong direction, and very few of them escape in the face of the enemy. Then you are a general who is both wise and brave and who can lead his subordinates well. The Queen will give you a medal (regardless of whether those more than a thousand men disappear after rushing forward).

Chen Tianheng thought this might explain why Pavlov had refused to teach his students about the Brusilov Breakthrough. This was completely alien knowledge outside the Soviet teaching system.

"There's a new person, there's a new person!"

At the War Research Society, Guan Linzheng shouted loudly, grabbed a student's arm and brought him in front of everyone.

"My last name is Du, Du Yuming. Yu is the right half of the character for 'law' in the Chinese character for 'discipline'. Hello, President Chen, and hello to all my classmates."

Du Yuming greeted the members present in a very mature and polite manner.

Chen Tianheng: "Hello, classmate Du Yuming, welcome to join the War Research Society."

Du Yuming: "Before joining, I would like to ask a small question. Um, is this War Research Society and the Qing Army League the same organization?"

Chen Tianheng: "Of course it's not an organization. The War Research Society's purpose is 'global vision, focusing on the future, studying war, and winning wars.' The Young Soldiers' Association's purpose is 'young soldiers unite to establish a revolutionary united front.'"

Du Yuming: "I just found out that the president of the Youth Army League is Jiang Xianyun, and the vice presidents are you and Chen Geng. The president of the War Research Society is you, and the vice presidents are Jiang Xianyun and Chen Geng, so I'm a little confused..."

Chen Geng: "Why don't you take a look at the Red Star Society? I founded it. I was the president, and the vice presidents were Chen Tianheng and Jiang Xianyun."

Du Yuming: "So, can we say that the Youth Army League is a political organization; the War Research Society is a military academic organization; and the Red Star Society is a propaganda and literary organization? That's fine. I'm really a little confused about politics."

Chen Tianheng: "Strictly speaking, these three organizations are a revolutionary political organization, a revolutionary military organization, and a revolutionary propaganda and literary and artistic organization. We want to create a revolutionary army. Revolution itself is a political term, and it is currently impossible to remove our political attributes. In other words, in the process of discussing and studying war, the War Research Society will inevitably touch upon politics."

"I understand. Then, I'll join."

Du Yuming joined the club.

During the Liberation War, Du Yuming served as the fire chief, giving people the impression that he was a close descendant of Chiang Kai-shek and a disciple of the emperor. However, this was not the case.

Perhaps because he was from Shaanxi, Du Yuming was not Chiang Kai-shek's disciple, and he was not taken seriously at the beginning.

Du Yuming was a complete slacker during the Northern Expedition, having been dispatched to the north shortly after graduating in early 1925. Hu Jingyi of Henan suddenly expressed his support for Sun Yat-sen, prompting the Kuomintang to dispatch Du Yuming and a group of others to help Hu Jingyi establish a revolutionary army and a military academy. However, less than a month after arriving, Hu Jingyi died of illness, the group disbanded, the Soviet advisors were expelled, and Du Yuming was also expelled to Shaanxi.

Later, the Kuomintang party asked Du Yuming to stay in the north, so he wandered around the north and accomplished nothing because the Kuomintang organization in the north was also being driven away.

After the Northern Expedition began, he returned south to rejoin his troops, but was arrested in Nanjing by Sun Chuanfang's forces. After escaping prison, he traveled to Wuhan, where he encountered the Wang Jingwei government's frenzied anti-Chiang campaign between April 412 and July 715. He was nearly executed for not being resolute enough in his opposition. He escaped and returned to Nanjing, which had already been captured by the Northern Expedition, where he served as a lieutenant colonel on the Review Committee. Just two weeks later, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to step down, and he lost his job...

Du Yuming is a capable person, but now we need to do some ideological work on him.

He was born in 1904 and is only 20 years old this year, so he is still capable of doing ideological work.

Look at Zheng Dongguo and Huang Wei, aren’t they now regular visitors to the War Research Society and the Youth Army League?